E/CN.4/2006/6/Add.6 page 26 completed. At the same time, China’s legislative departments are accelerating revision of the ‘Administrative Review Law’ and ‘National Compensation Law’ in order to improve the administrative litigation procedure and compensation mechanisms. In August 2005, the National People’s Congress passed the ‘Public Security Administration Punishment Law’, which will take effect in March 2006, in order to further establish standards for the fundamental behaviors that public security agencies should respect and for supervision of law enforcement and thereby further standardize the exercise of police powers. In October 2005, the Supreme People’s Court issued its second five-year reform outline, explicitly restoring to the Supreme Court the power of review over the death penalty. From January 1, 2006, courts are required to hold hearings in death penalty cases of second instance where an appeal has been raised because of serious factual or evidentiary problems; in the second half of the year, all death penalty cases of second instance will be tried in a court hearing. The aforementioned legislative measures will without doubt provide more complete and stronger legal and judicial protections for China’s [efforts to] prevent and combat torture and protect the rights of detainees.” 6 Criminal Law adopted at the Second Session of the Fifth NPC on 1 July, 1979 and Revised at the Fifth Session of the Eighth NPC on 14 March, 1997. 7 These include: intentional homicide (article 232); negligent causing of death (article 233); intentional injury (article 234); negligent injury (article 235); acts against or insulting a woman by violence, coercion or any other forcible means (article 237); unlawful detention (article 238); public humiliation (article 246); maltreatment of a family member (article 260); obstruction of a witness or instigation to give false testimony by violence or threat (article 307); beating or subjecting another person held in custody to corporal punishment or instigating another person to do so (article 315(4)). These other offences relate to public officials and non-public persons as perpetrators. In non-criminal areas, China has passed and formulated relevant legal regulations to prevent torture. Art. 41 of the “Regulations on Public Security Administration” states: “Public security personnel carrying out these provisions…are prohibited from mistreating, abusing, or insulting persons who have violated public security administration. Violators are subject to administrative punishment; in cases that constitute criminal behaviour, criminal responsibility will be pursued.” Art. 116 of the “Public Security Administration Punishment Law,” which will go into effect on March 1, 2006 and replace the “Regulations on Public Security Administration,�� also has similar language. The “Provisional Methods on Reeducation Through Labor” and the “Code of Conduct for Police Officers Working in Reeducation Through Labor” also clearly prohibit torture, overwork, and misuse of incarceration and police weapons. 8 Compare this to the 1979 Criminal Law, articles 13 and 83, which stipulated that a wider range of officials could be prosecuted for “torture to coerce a confession”, as the prohibition applied to “state personnel” defined as “all personnel of state organs, enterprises and institutions and other personnel engaged in public service according to the law”. In written comments to the Special Raaporteur of 3 January 2006, the PRC felt that it was necessary to point out that most Chinese laws do not distinguish between torture by civil servants and torture by non civil-servants. “Other than the crimes of “coercive interrogation and violent extraction of evidence” and “subjecting imprisoned persons to corporal punishment,” for which law enforcement officers are naturally the subject of prosecution, China’s criminal code also has other provisions prohibiting torture, such as “murder with intent” (art. 232), and “impairing with testimony” (art. 307), for